How to set KPIs and Prioritize Your Time

July 11, 2022

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Prioritization matters. KPIs
help you prioritize.

Sure - you should try to do all the things.

But in a smart order.
….and maybe you don’t get to all of them.

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What is a “KPI”? What is “prioritization”?

● “Key Performance Indicator” aka a ● What do you work on each day?

measurable metric you track

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 Today’s Task List (example)

❏ Evaluate 2 more CRMs and pick one

❏ Set up google workspaces
❏ Figure out if you can pay office rent electronically and set up ACH
❏ Respond to inbound angel investor email about “coffee” meeting
❏ Call 5 users
❏ Respond to customer support emails
❏ Incorporate yesterday’s user feedback into sprint and ship V1
❏ Draft investor update
❏ Move dentist appointment
❏ Make Buy [frozen] appetizers for your husband’s bday party
❏ Call your grandmother for her birthday
❏ 30 minute workout
Why KPIs & Prioritization in one talk?
● If you prioritize badly, you won’t move your KPIs
● If you choose the wrong KPIs, you spend your time on
the wrong things

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Why are KPIs and Prioritization Important?
● As a founder, nobody is going to tell you how to spend
your time.
● As a founder, you have to move fast but also make sure
you’re moving in the right direction

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Why the rush? Can’t I just grow slowly?
● No.

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Let’s talk about how to
prioritize.

You’ll never complete your task list ever again.

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Prioritizing how much to Prioritizing what to work on
work on your startup vs. in your startup
other things

● Work, health (exercise, mental ● Focus of today’s talk!

health), family ● Make the time you spend on your
● Looks different for each person startup matter.
● Align with your co-founder!

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Identify your top KPI(s) and Blockers
● In 90% of situations, this is Revenue Growth
○ will talk more about choosing your KPIs in the last section of
this talk
● Set a target for what you want to achieve in the short term, make
sure it ladders up to any long term goals you have
● Identify your biggest bottleneck/problem in moving your top KPI

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Identify your biggest bottleneck:
Example from SuprDaily
● Top KPI: Growth, bottlenecked by conversion late in the funnel

● Biggest problem: why are high intent users not converting?

○ Missing a popular milk brand NOT a problem with sign-up
flow

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 Simple System to move your KPI(s)

1. Write down ideas that may help

a. Rank & choose a few
2. If your KPI doesn’t move, be brutally honest about why
3. Do honest retros; learn, and adjust course:
a. If it wasn’t working, do something different
b. If it was working, double down
4. Move fast.
For a company that is pre product/market fit….

Things that probably should

Things that *should* be on
*not* be on your list
your list
● Investor “coffees” (except when
● Talking to users / responding to
you’re actively fundraising)
customer support messages
● Conferences
● Building features you know your
● Arbitrary technical milestones
customers will pay for
● Press hits
● Getting users to pay for what
you’ve built

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Common traps when prioritizing
1) Checking things off a list feels good
2) It’s easy to convince yourself something is working when it
isn’t
3) Perfectionism and indecision are your enemy: fast decisions
are good decisions
4) Mitigating downside (rather than chasing upside) can feel
falsely urgent
5) Working on secondary problems instead of the existential
one

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Prioritization Recap:

● you’ll never get to everything on your task list

● Use KPIs to prioritize your work Move fast.
● Be honest with yourself; fail fast

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Choosing the right KPIs makes sure
that you’re moving fast in the right
direction

Prioritization is only effective if you’re prioritizing against the right north star. You can’t afford to waste
time running fast in the wrong direction.

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 Primary Metric Secondary Metric(s)
● This is the metric that ● Things that need to be tracked to
unequivocally tells you if your make sure you’re not
business is working cheating/gaming your primary
● Most commonly revenue growth metric, and in for a surprise
● Examples:
○ Retention/churn
Bad KPIs (aka Vanity Metrics) ○ Unit economics
○ Acquisition cost and payback
○ Amount Raised
period
○ Team Size
○ NPS
○ Office Space sqft
○ Press Hits
○ Celebrity Endorsements
○ Instagram Likes
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Case Study: Primary vs. Secondary KPI

DoorDash on Demo Day (S13) Rickshaw on Demo Day (W14)

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Case Study: Primary vs. Secondary KPI

DoorDash in 2016 Rickshaw in 2016

(still laser focused on top line) (focusing on top line & unit economics)

● Rapid growth
● Raised a $127M Series C
● Operating in 19 markets
● Investing aggressively in growth
● Growing slowly and steadily
● ~$1M in Revenue, in 2 markets
● Profitable

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Setting Targets: How much growth is enough?
● From Paul Graham:
○ 5-7% WoW = good
○ 10% WoW = exceptional
● Early growth matters; growth rate compounds
● Some factors to consider:
○ Latent demand may boost early growth
○ Length of Sales Cycle (esp for enterprise products)
○ Organic vs. paid
○ Retention/Engagement

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Two methods for setting goals (do both, see how they compare)

Bottoms up
Top Down

● Pick a milestone/date in the future
that you want/need to hit (e.g.
$10k MRR by Demo Day)
● Work backwards from this for
bi-weekly goals
● What is realistic for you to get done
in the next 2 weeks?
● Work up from this to determine a
realistic future milestone

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More about non-revenue KPIs
● CAC/LTV
○ Focus on payback period
● Free signups/DAUs
○ Only if your product requires a
network effect
● Businesses that may need custom KPIs:
○ Hardware/biotech
○ Open source projects
○ Enterprise products with very long
sales cycles

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Takeaways
● Move fast, but in the right direction
● Prioritization:
○ you’ll never get to everything on your task
list
○ Use KPIs to prioritize your work - only work
Prioritization
on the biggest blocker to your primary KPI matters. KPIs
○ Be honest with yourself; fail fast
● KPIs
help you
○ Primary KPI = Revenue Growth, unless prioritize.
exceptional circumstances
○ Secondary KPIs are important to track, but
not necessarily optimize (yet) 23
Q&A

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